Cineaste Publishers, Inc.

RE-CREATING THEIR MEDIA IMAGE: Two Generations of Black Women Filmmakers

Author(s): John Williams
Source: Cinaste, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1994), pp. 38-41
Published by: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41687324
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RE-CREATING THEIR MEDIA IMAGE

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feminist' paradigm of films by, for,

with
andher landmark film, Losing Ground ,
which was completed in 1982 when she
In 1977 Kathleen Collins penned a was teaching film at the City College of
manifesto entitled "A Place in Time and
Nineties such as Mario Van Peebles ( New
New York. Although having the distincKiller of Sheep: Two Radical Definitionstion
of of being one of the first independent
Jack City) y Ernest Dickerson (Juice), John
Adventure Minus Women."1 Her unsparfeature films to be written, produced, and
Singleton (Boy z N the Hood ), and Albert
ing indignation was directed at the misogdirected by a black woman, Losing Ground
and Allen Hughes (Menace II Society).
never enjoyed a commercial release nor
yny implicit in Hollywood action-advenWhile it is refreshing to see black males
critical comment.
ture films which placed black women substantial
on
finally being given the opportunity to
majce films in the commercial film industheir peripheries. She charged that films Postmodern and antirealist, the film
like Shaft and Super fly did nothing more
has the look and feel of a painting. Using a
try, the somewhat self-serving media
than reproduce, in a different hue, the
highly innovative, nonlinear method of
hoopla about them has all but eclipsed a
phallocentric conventions of white Hollyfar more complex, diverse, and challengpresentation, Losing Ground dramatizes
wood cinema. Her critique, alas, could several
be
different 'stories' which merge
ing body of work by black women. This
applied almost in toto to the recent spate
together rather than a single conventional
cinema runs the gamut from full-length
features and documentaries to dramatic
of home-boy potboilers produced by Holplot. Employing a technique akin to a
lywood studios.
shorts, experimental narratives, and docuFrench New Novel la Marguerite Duras,
the ostensible tale of marital infidelity
dramas of varying lengths. Linked to a Collins effectively demonstrated the
kind of cinematic breakthrough necessary
involving a black female philosophy prothriving cinema created by black women
fessor and her spouse, an abstract painter,
in the United Kingdom, Africa, Canada,
is never quite told.
and the Caribbean diaspora, it offers critiThe film focuses on a sector of black
cism of and alternatives to the stereotypi-

greeted the arrival of hip-hop,

A veritable greeted'home-boy'
'home-boy'
filmmakers
the media
of thearrival filmmakers sensation of hip-hop, of has the

about black women.

cal images of black women found in

mainstream media.

The pioneering generation of these

middle class life seldom examined before

in film and rarely revisited since: black

female intellectuals who teach at major

universities. Representations of such

black women filmmakers working in the

U.S. includes such key individuals as

women are explored through a variety of

means, including jazz, salsa, choreo-

Kathleen Collins-Prettyman in the genre

of narrative feature film and Madeline

graphed dance, and theatre-of-the-absurd

reenactments. Serving to intensify the
film's theme of black female emancipa-

Anderson in documentary. A second generation - growing out of the civil rights,

women's, and cultural nationalist move'Lip syncing' a song for a white actress in tion is a 'movie within a movie' device
Julie Dash's Illusions.
ments of the Sixties and Seventies that weaves in and out of its many tales.
At various intervals, this allows viewers to
includes Julie Dash, Alile Sharon Larkin,
1 Collins, Kathleen. "A Place in Time and Killer of
Monica Freeman, and Camille Billops.
see normally off-screen film production
Sheep: Two Radical Definitions of Adventure
Today the birth of a third wave can
be
personnel
in the process of making the
Minus Women," In Color: 60 Years of Images of
detected in the works of DareshaMinority
Kyi. Women in Film, 1921-1981, Pearl Bowser very film they are actually viewing. This
and Ada Griffin, eds. NY: Third World Newsreel,
draws attention to the fabricated nature of
Consideration of selected works by these
1984, pp. 5-7. Copies of In Color are available from
'the real' in film which is itself a reflection
71 Jorale-

women suggests an emerging esthetic

Pearl Bowser, African Diaspora Images,
mon Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
which might be considered as a 'black

of reality in the commonsense world.

38 CINEASTE

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Kathleen Collins Julie Dash Alile Sharon Larkin Monica Freeman Camille Billops
photo courtesy of Pearl Bowser photo by Ira Richolson photo by Susan J. Ross photo by Pieter Vandermeer

UCLA-based
campus insurgents dubbed
emanating from the starlet's mouth, a
Drawing on her own translations
of
Afro-Haitian scholar Dr. Jean Louisthe
Price"L.A. Rebellion" by film critic Clyde
high-tech Hollywood expert known only
Mars's Voodoo: Case Study in Comparative
Taylor. Others in the group include Haile
as "Head Engineer" is summoned to actualize this amazing feat of modern technolPsychiatry , the images of the tragic Gerima,
mulat- Alile Sharon Larkin, Carroll Blue,

Larry
to figures presented by Dorothy
Dan-Clark, Barbara McCullough,ogy known today as 'lip sync.' Rarely has

the commercial film industry's pirating of

dridge in Carmen Jones and Charles
Pearl Burnett, and Anita Addison. Shot
infasciblack and white on a budget of $28,000,
black culture for its own mercenary ends
McCormick in Scar of Shame> and a
been so effectively rendered.
the thirty-four-minute Illusions explores
nating Afro-Hispanic subtext, Collins
the icon of the tragic mulatto inherited Illusions was the first installment of a
explores the protagonist's right to narrate
from silent films of the Thirties like Oscar projected trilogy of films aiming to chronthe story of her own life without deferring
icle the experience of African-American
Micheaux's
God's Stepchildren and Frank
to male-gendered 'others' seeking
to
women over the last three centuries.
Perugini's Scar of Shame.
define it for her, her spouse a case-inIllusions features a light-skinned,Dash's highly acclaimed Daughters of the
point. In the film's tragicomic apotheosis,
Dust, set in the nineteenth century, is the
upwardly-mobile female who cleverly
"Sara-the-professor," who is also known
second in the series. The third will be her
her hybrid status as a "white
as the "tragic mulatto," and who manipulates
is also
known as "Frankie," shoots and kills
her to gain a foothold in a stratum of
yet-to-be-produced Bone , Ashy and Rose ,
Negro"
the commercial film industry to which
set in the year 2050 A.D.
adulterous lover, "Johnny," in a phantasblacks
have been denied access. Dash asks
Reflecting a sensibility akin to films
magoric, cleansing ritual. Thus, the
film
her
audience to consider what might hap-hailing from Africa such as Flora Gomes's
becomes a mythic retelling of the
infapen if women of color were in a positionBlue Eyes ofYonta , Alile Sharon Larkin's A
mous 'Frankie-and-Johnny-were sweethearts, she-shot-her-man-because-heto create images of themselves. WouldDifferent Image explores the lives of two
thisthe
result in a more multidimensional
upwardly-mobile L.A. residents - an
did-her-wrong' legend retold from
archetypal African-American female and
depiction of black women or would ecopoint of view of a black woman.
African-American male. Shot on a tiny
The film, which initially received nomic
funds pressures force the usual cultural
from both the American Film Institute
compromises?
budget of $15,000, Larkin uses a docuand the National Endowment for the Arts, Dash offers a multilayered tale of two
mentary-like approach to explore the
clash of those caught simultaneously
would not have been completed had notblack women - Mignon Dupree, a black
in a
their African racial heritage and
postproduction costs been picked up by astudio executive passing for white between
West German television network (ARD) milieu in which her race is viewed as
Western cultural identity. Larkin's characafter all other American sources refused
ter Alana has established a platonic relaanathema, and Esther Jeeter, an aspiring
with Vincent. In a cinematic colare
aid. The few critics who deigned to com- jazz singer. These two characters tionship
ment on the film were less than receptive placed in a mythological Hollywood lage
stu-filled with music, dance, storytelling,
pantomine,
and stills of African women of
a
to its originality. As the film was con- dio circa 1942. Using a 'movie within
the diaspora, the film investigates Vinsciously devoid of the ghetto stereotypes movie' device reminiscent of the one
cent's inability to perceive Alana's selfso commonplace in films by home-boy employed by Collins, Dash juxtaposes
hood. She remains invisible to him, his
filmmakers today, most critics simply did Dupree and Jeeter in opposing relationnot know how to comment on its subversive vision of black culture. Some even

ships vis-a-vis both the white malevision

and obscured by myths which he has,

unwittingly, embraced, of African women

female personae in the studio. Dupree
sexual objects. In a cathartic rape scene,
acts as foil against which others in theasstutook issue with the very notion of a "black
Vincent violates their mutual pact of
dio play out their racist and sexist suppofemale philosophy professor" as entailing
sitions about black women, while Jeeter
friendship. In A Different Image , Larkin
too much of a willing suspension of disbelief.
finds herself reduced to doing surrogate
reveals the ways in which misguided black
voice-overs for Hollywood starlets lessmale
tal- desires to be perpetually 'on top'
In 1988 Kathleen Collins died premawork to undermine black female autonoented than she.
turely at the age of forty-six. Her cinemat-

ic legacy - postmodern, iconoclastic, and

experimental - was assumed by Julie Dash

In one of the film's most telling

my.

moments, Jeeter is hired by the studioWhen

to one compares the crime-free,
who had been a student at CCNY when
inner-city L.A. inhabited by Larkin's proprovide the singing voice for a white
tagonists
with the crime-ridden, drugan
Collins was teaching there. Dash's firstfemale in a musical extravaganza. In
infested
attempt to create the false illusion that
her one depicted in recent films by
film, Illusions , was produced while she
black male filmmakers such as Menace II
mellifluous, big band voice is actually
was associated with an eclectic group of
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in the fight for civil rights is all but

Society , the difference suggests more than

just a time factor. Such a tremendous gulf
of perception divides the two gendered
viewpoints upon the world to the point
that Larkin's film might more accurately
be entitled A Different World rather than
A Different Image. Alana is marginalized
not so much as a result of her race, class,
and gender, but because she hails from a
Third World subculture whose values are

obscured in works such as Henry Hampton's highly lauded Eyes on the Prize tele-

vision series and most other accounts of

this era.

Camille Billops's Finding Christa represents a different documentary tradition in

works by black women than that of

Anderson or Freeman. A renowned sculptor whose works have been exhibited

completely antithetic to the Eurocentric

culture in which she lives. Not surprisingly, Larkin draws on views found in Ralph
Ellison's novel, The Invisible Man, to illuminate the theme of black female invisibility in her film. Significantly, her Afro- A scene from Monica J. Freeman's Valerie:

A Woman , An Artist, A Philosophy of Life!

abroad as well as in the U.S., Billops came

to prominence as a filmmaker with the
runaway success of Finding Christa which
shared the top prize for Best Documentary at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.
An experimental narrative which mixes

centric protagonist Alana stands in sharp

the genres of nonfiction and fiction film,
the work deals head-on with the stereocontrast to images of other inner-city news program on the Public Broadcasting
black women depicted in films such asService. Her documentaries include Maltypical image of the single black mother
Leslie Harris's Just Another Girl on the IRTcolm X: Nationalist or Humanist? and her so maligned in network news today. Interhighly acclaimed I Am Somebody. Toldweaving family photos, home videos, fanand Ruby Oliver's Love Your Mama.
A film frequently cited as an "inspira- from the point of view of an actual partic-tasy-performance sequences, and archival
tion" by many second generation black ipant, I Am Somebody chronicles thefootage, the film examines the decision by
women filmmakers is Monica J. Free- efforts of a group of Charleston, Southa female visual artist, played by the direcman's Valerie: A Woman , An Artisty A Phi- Carolina nurses in the struggle for civiltor, to give up her out-of-wedlock born
losophy of Life! Produced by Freeman inrights and fair employment practices indaughter, Christa, for adoption rather
the Seventies when she was associated
the late Sixties. The film highlights thethan condemning her to an existence of
roles of civil rights luminaries such aspain, poverty, and neglect.
with the Nafasi Productions filmmaking
Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, and
collective, the work occupies a sacred
Punctuated by a series of existential
the late Reverend Ralph Abernathy inquestions such as "Why did you leave?,"
place in the tradition of biographical films
assisting
striking hospital workers to orga-"Christa, where are you?," and "OK,
about black women. Subsequent films
in
nize a union.
this tradition include Carroll Blue's tribChrista, what now?," Billops's personalBy spotlighting the heroism of black familial tale of mother-daughter reclamaute to visual artist Varnette Honeywood,
Varnette's World: A Study of a Young working class women in the struggle for tion obliterates certain mythologies about
Artist, Joanne Grant's elegy to civil rights civil rights shortly after the death of Mar- black women deemed 'underprivileged'
activist Ella Baker, Fundi: The Story of Ella tin Luther King, Jr., the film unintention- and 'disadvantaged' by society. The film
Baker , and Elena Featherston's tribute to ally subverts traditional accounts of the shows the high functional ability of black
author Alice Walker, Alice Walker: Visions movement. The role of blue collar females children raised in nontraditional extended
of the Spirit.

Philosophical and contemplative, Freeman's fifteen-minute portrait trumpets

the unsung accomplishments of Valerie
Maynard - a New York-based printmaker

and sculptor who was, at one time, an

Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum

of Harlem. In her all-too-short homage,

Freeman is able only to give a taste of the

work of a visionary female artist who

describes her primary mission in life to
"get people to take stuff away, so that
[they] can get to that which [they] see." In

Valerie , Freeman concludes by exploring

the theme of black female invisibility in
the visual arts, a male-dominated arena in

which women of color are conspicuously

underrepresented.
Freeman, as well as other black women
filmmakers, is deeply indebted to Madeline Anderson, one of the first black

women to write, produce, and direct

major nonfiction films. The NYU- trained
Anderson made her initial entry into the
ranks of union film and television production while working as a film editor on
the staff of William Greaves's Black Jour- Christa Victoria in Camille Billops's
nal (1968-1977), the first national black fiction/nonfiction film. Finding Christa.

families, while questioning the assumed

superiority of those raised in middle class,

nuclear families.

Marking the birth of a third generation

of university-trained black women filmmakers is Daresha Kyi's Land Where My

Fathers Died. A quasiautobiographical,

twenty-four-minute docudrama, the film

was shot for under $40,000. Like her second generation predecessor, Julie Dash,
Kyi honed her filmmaking skills in the

American Film Institute's Director's Con-

servatory Program for women of color.

Begun while Kyi was a film student at
NYU, Land Where My Fathers Died was
funded by the New York Council on the

Arts and the Women in Film Foundation.

Featuring the director in the title role,

the film explores the relationship between

two New Age, black urban professionals

of the Nineties, Azzia Williams and her
neonationalist boyfriend, Malcolm David-

son. The couple decide to visit Azzia's

alcoholic father who has taken up resi-

dence with another alcoholic referred to

as her "Uncle James." The encounter

between the two very different generations reaches a dour climax when it is

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revealed that both Azzia and Malcolm are

themeselves the emotionally scarred children of the post-civil rights black middle

class. Informed by oral history storytelling, Land Where My Fathers Died

engages the problems of codependency,
child abandonment, and parental
estrangement within a black family
harkening the director's own. At the same

time, it renders a searing critique of the

systematic decimation of the AfricanAmerican male by American society.
The films highlighted here are but a

tiny sampling of the diverse array of

DAUGHTERS OF
THE DIASPORA
A Filmography of Sixty-Five

Black Women Independent

Film- and Video-Makers

works written, produced, and directed by

black wmen filmmakers in the U.S. [seeCompiled by John
accompanying "Daughters of the Diaspora
Anita Addison
Filmography" - ed.], and does not in any
Eva's Man (1976) 13 mins.
way claim to be exhaustive, all-encom-

Williams
Delle Chatman

Madam Secretary ( 1993) 28 mins.

Savannah (1989) 30 mins.

passing or representative of all such

works.

In their boldness and uncompromising

sincerity, works by black women independent filmmakers point to a variety of perspectives conspicuously absent from those
of many of their male contemporaries
working in commercial cinema. Although
there is no all-embracing esthetic, in the
sense of neorealism or film noir , unifying
the productions of black women filmmakers in the U.S., and although their

Maya Angelou
Georgia , Georgia (1972) 90 mins.
Sister, Sister (1982) 90 mins.

Ayoka Chenzira
Syvilla: They Dance to Her Drum (1979) 25
mins.

Flamboyant Ladies Speak Out (1982) 30

mins.

Madeline Anderson

Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy-Headed People

Integration Report I (1960) 24 mins. (1984) 10 mins.

Malcolm X: Nationalist or Humanist ? (1967)

Secret Sounds Screaming: The Sexual

14 mins.

Abuse of Children (1986) 30 mins.

Five Out of Five (1987) 7 mins.

I Am Somebody (1970) 28 mins.

Walls Came Tumbling Down (1975) 29 mins.Zajota and the Boogie Spirit (1989) 14 mins.
Alma's Rainbow (1992) 85 mins.

works, oftentimes, share perspectives

Melvonna Ballenger

Pull Your Head to the Moon: Stories of Cre-

found in some productions by their male

counterparts, their films exhibit an undeniable and compelling racially-gendered

Rain (1982) 15 mins.

ole Women (1992) 12 mins.

world view or Zeitgeist.

Whatever the genre or style employed,

these films by, for, and about black

Nappy-Headed Lady (1983) 30 mins.

Portia Cobb
Toni Cade Bambara

The Bombing of Osage Avenue (1988) 58

mins.

Mary Neema Barnette

Sky Captain (1984) 65 mins.
AIDS and Black Women (1991) 30 mins.
that has heretofore been invisible. Rather
Zora is My Name (1990) 90 mins.
than the New Jack , Hollywood, home-boy
Different Worlds: A Story of Interracial Love

films currently touted by the mass media, (1992) 60 mins.

it is this tradition which is redressing the Better Off Dead (1993) 60 mins.

maligned image of Third World people

around the world and seeking to trans- Camille Billops

the twentieth century.

(1990) 4 mins.

No Justice, No Peace: Black Males Immedi-

women express the desire to speak the

'unspeakable' about the lives of AfricanAmerican women, making visible much

form African-American consciousness in

Endangered Species Ed. (1990) Installation

Who Are You?: An Oakland Love Story

Suzanne, Suzanne (1982) 26 mins.

Older Women and Love (1987) 26 mins.

Finding Christa (1991) 55 mins.

I am indebted for their assistance on this project

to Monica Freeman, Pearl Bowser, Jackie Shearer

Burch
(in memoriam), Cheryl Fabio, CamilleAarin
Billops,

ate (1992) 14 mins.

Kathleen Collins-Prettyman
The Cruz Brothers and Mrs. Malloy (1980) 54
mins.

Losing Ground (1982) 86 mins.

Carmen Coustaut

Extra Change (1987) 30 mins.

France Covington
The Gospel According to... (1988) 60 mins.
Michelle Crenshaw

Ayoka Chenzira, Mary Neema Barnette,

Alfred
Dreams
of Passion (1989) 5 mins.

Skin Deep (1990) 8 mins.

Distribution Sources:

Julie Dash

Prettyman, Linda Gibson, and Julie Dash.

Spin Cycles (1990) 5 mins.

Carroll Parrott Blue

Diary of an African Nun (1977) 13 mins.
Illusions, A Different Image and Land Where My
Four
Women (1978) 7 mins.
World: A Study of a Young
Artist
Fathers Died are distributed by WomenVarnette's
Make
Movies, 462 Broadway, New York, NY 10013,
(1979) 26 mins.
Relatives (1989) 30 mins.
phone (212) 925-0606.
Conversations with Roy de Carava (1984) 28Illusions (1983) 34 mins.
Finding Christa is distributed by Third World mins.
Daughters of the Di/si (1991) 113 mins.

Newsreel, 335 West 38th St., New York, NY

10018, phone (212) 947-9277.

Nigerian Art: Kindred Spirits (1990) 58 mins.

Valerie: A Woman, An Artist, A Philosophy of

Pearl Bowser
Life! is distributed by Phoenix Films, 468 Park
Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, phone (212)
Namibia: Independence Now! (1985) 55

684-5910.

mins.

I Am Somebody is distributed by First Run Icarus

Midnight Ramble (1993) 60 mins.

Films, 153 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10014,

phone (212) 727-1711.

Praise House (1991) 30 mins.

Zeinabu irene Davis

Recreating Black Women's Media Image

(1983) 30 mins.

Crocodile Conspiracy ( 1986) 13 mins.

Sweet Bird of Youth (1986) 8 mins.
CINEASTE 41

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